Watched him in person against Mississauga on Sunday, in a 7-1 blowout for Mississauga.

It's even more impressive to see his numbers considering how incompetent his team is. He was held on the bench a lot that day since Sarnia decided to have a parade to the penatly box for the first couple of periods.

Yakupov was quick, I don't think the play ever ended with him, however he always started one. There was a point in the game that led to the only goal by Sarnia where he deked/avoided checks from 2 Mississauga players in Center ice- then continued with the puck where he wont the boards battle and gave it to Galchenyuk - Kerbashian for a goal.

Kitsyn also looked above everyone else, very calm and confident on the puck, with a few very nice passes, assist, and a couple of dangerous shots.

Yakupov remind me of Radulov in his Quebec Remparts days for his goal celebation lol

Can't say I saw much of Radulov back in the day when he played in Quebec, but the only person I've seen get this excited when he or his teammates score is Alex Ovechkin. Yakupov is going to be a star, I know its early, but it's going to be extremely hard for someone to dethrone him, he's that damn good.

Can't say I saw much of Radulov back in the day when he played in Quebec, but the only person I've seen get this excited when he or his teammates score is Alex Ovechkin. Yakupov is going to be a star, I know its early, but it's going to be extremely hard for someone to dethrone him, he's that damn good.

there you go never seen anything like radulov EVER. if he did that in the nhl he would have got killed

This might be a retarded question but is Tomas Tatar of Tatar descent?

Only his name's meaning. His ancestors might have had some kind of a relation to tatars even without being blood related to them. I suppose you know how names are made. One of my ancestors was nicknamed "gypsy" just because he loved horses. A couple of centuries earlier it could easily become his last name which he'd pass on to his descendants. And then "tatars" is quite an inaccurate term, as there were and there are different tatars who are not even related to each other. At some point in history all the territories now belonging to Russia were regarded as "Tartaria" by the europeans who basically had no idea about the peoples living there and "tatars" became a term for all people from beyond the Baltic Sea-Black Sea line.

i hope i won't get banned for too much off-topic thou i guess maybe it's interesting for you to know a bit about Yakupov's native culture.

yeah, it's a bit different here (Tatarstan/Bashkortostan) for centuries we had Islam as the main religion and it had been modificated due to national mentality, we never had sharia law here, because our society is based more on the cultural basis (not like Arabian countries where Islam is the foundation of everything)
in 19th century it was given the name - "djadidizm"(جديدية‎‎ in Arabic, Jəditçelek in Tatar) modern Islam in other words.Sometimes it's called EuroIslam in media.

it's not just islamic influence here.it's islamic regions and it's became part of Russia only in 16th century.we (tatars/bashkorts) call our home Idel-Üral (Volga-Urals in English and Russian) - it's not only Bashkortostan/Tatarstan but also Sverdlovsk Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Samara region, the towns in this"russian now" regions had their names changed for example: Samara was originaly Tatar town Xamar(and the name of the River too).we call it our home because these "Russians" regions was our native lands back to 15-16th century, but Russian/Soviet administration split of regions left us with only Tat-tan and Bash-tan now adays.Thou there are a lot of Tatars/Bashkirs live in this regions(like Chelyabinsk) Khabibulin is from Sverdlovsk so no suprise he's having Tatar surname. in Soviet Era our culture was under the pressure from Soviet propaganda, they forced us to change our alphabet from Latin to Cyrillic, many mosques were destroyed, it was forbidden to teach Tatar-Bashkort children its native language and so on.After the collapse it's changed, now we're having freedom in such things as education, culture, religion, walking on Ufa street you can often here Tatar-Bashkort speech instead of Russian it was nothing like there back in Soviet times.

about Khabib you're absolutely right, it's "loved by Allah"
our Surnames and Names are either have Turkic or Arabian origin less Persian.My surname is Ramazan(ov) for example it's Tatar name for Muslim Holy Month "Ramadan"

i suggest you visit Ufa in 2013 we'll be holding 2013 IIHF WJC, you can look at "the other" Russia yourself Rəxim Iteğez ("Your Welcome")

You are exaggerating, to say the least. Your stories about "oppression" of the soviet era are simply not true. I lived there, so I know exactly what it was like. Tatars are one of the most culturally developed and open minded muslim nations in the world. They are a big and important part of Russia's society. All that wouldn't be possible if they would have suffered from that kind of discrimination in the Soviet Union. There was tatar language free to learn, there was tatar television, theatres and so on, there was Tatar spoken everywhere in the streets, stores, schools etc.. The only issue was the religion. But ALL religions were not forbidden but only tolerated and stricktly controlled in the Soviet Union which inevitably caused them to degenerate. I'm in fact wary that the "freedom" now turns out to be the curse with a lot of arabic-funded doubious organizations appearing in the last years trying to spread their kind of Islam. I can only hope tatars remeber who they really are and stay away from that dangerous game being presented as "religious rebirth".

I still don't get why many Oilers fans don't understand that they need some top talent defensemen. You would have an insane group of forwards, but still lack a lot of defense. Defense wins championships.

I still don't get why many Oilers fans don't understand that they need some top talent defensemen. You would have an insane group of forwards, but still lack a lot of defense. Defense wins championships.

I still don't get why many Oilers fans don't understand that they need some top talent defensemen. You would have an insane group of forwards, but still lack a lot of defense. Defense wins championships.

so what kind of stats should we expect out of yakupov next year? 100+ points?

If Yakupov plays the same amount of games as Hall and Stamkos did in their pre draft year, he is on pace for 99 this year (Better than both). Stamkos and Hall scored 105 and 106 respectively in their draft year, so you'd have to expect Yakupov to score 105+.